Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/371

Rh mediæval times, many Vāriyar families received royal edicts, conferring upon them the privileges of being tutors and astrologers. These special rights are even now possessed by them.

The following legend is narrated concerning the origin of the Vāriars. A Sūdra woman removed a bone from within a temple in obedience to the wish of certain Brāhman priests, and was excommunicated from her caste. The priests,on hearing this,were anxious to better her condition, and made her the progenitor of a class of Ambalavāsis or temple servants, who were afterwards known as Vāriyars. According to another legend, the corpse of a Mārān, which was found inside a Nambūtiri's house, was promptly removed by certain Nāyars, who on that account were raised in the social scale, and organised into a separate caste called Vāriyar. There is a still further tradition that, in the Treta Yuga, a Sūdra woman had five sons, the first of whom became the progenitor of the Tiyatunnis, and the second that of Vāriyars. A fourth account is given in the Kerala-mahātmya. A young Brāhman girl was married to an aged man. Not confident in unaided human effort, under circumstances such as hers, she devoted a portion of her time daily to preparing flower garlands for the deity of the nearest temple, and conceived. But the Brāhman welcomed the little stranger by getting the mother thrown out of caste. Her garlands could no longer be accepted, but, nothing daunted, she worked as usual, and made a mental offering of the garlands she prepared, which, through an unseen agency, became visible on the person of the deity. Though the people were struck with shame at their unkind treatment of the innocent girl, they were not prepared to take her back. The Vāriyan caste was accordingly constituted, and her child was brought up by